Xen Orchestra 5.5

Xen Orchestra last release of the year and this is a pretty big one. THE big new feature is file level restore for any existing (and future) delta backups.

But there is even more!

File level restore

This new features is a big step forward: you can now restore individual files against restoring the whole VM. And it works on all your existing backups (even those done before this release).

A new tab is available in the Backup view:

This is the initial release of the feature, but right now, you can already:

• first, select the VM backup where you want to restore file
• then, select from all the previous existing backups (with their date)
• next, select the VM disk and its partitions, it will display all the files inside
• finally, browse the files and download those you need!

Indeed, there is room for improvement, next releases will add multiple folder/files download, send files to a remote machine directly (SMB/SSH…), temporary exposing content of a disk for users without XOA account (temporary generated link) and so on. If you have ideas and feedback, you are welcome!

Current limitations are:

• you must use the latest XOA (download it from here and migration doc is here)
• it's not yet compatible with SMB remote. This will be fixed in the next release!

Exclude any VM disk from backup

During a delta backup job, you can avoid saving all disks of the VM. To do that, it's trivial: just edit the VM disk name and add [NOBAK] before the current name, eg: data-disk will become [NOBAK] data-disk (with a space or not after, doesn't matter).

Smart backup improved

Smart backup is now improved: you can use "reverse" conditions. For example, "please backup all the VMs that are…":

• NOT on this pool (so all the others)
• NOT having the "dev" tag
• etc.

This will give you a better flexibility.

Better select filters

It's now easier to ACLs on type of objects. You can reduce the content of a select by only displaying VMs, or hosts, or pools etc.

You can also add all of these objects at once with the "plus" icon:

Nagios backup alerts

Leveraging Nagios passive checks, you can now integrate XOA Backup in your Nagios infrastructure!

For more details and configuration, read our previous article.

An impressive year

2016 was an impressive year. Let's just have a quick look of all the new features we released:

• Continuous delta backup
• Self service portal
• Load balancing
• New UI
• Smart backup
• OVA Import
• IP management for self service
• File level restore in this very release ;)

So what's next for Xen Orchestra in 2017? A LOT of exciting new stuff (take a look at XenServer hyperconverged storage). Stay in touch!